[17391] in Athena Bugs
Re: sgi 8.3.23: netscape
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (t. belton)
Mon Nov 29 10:26:31 1999
Date: Mon, 29 Nov 1999 10:26:26 -0500 (EST)
From: "t. belton" <tbelton@MIT.EDU>
To: Robert A Basch <rbasch@mit.edu>
cc: bugs@mit.edu
In-Reply-To: <199911250112.UAA19688@aupair.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.3.96L.991129102416.26589F-100000@iphigenia.mit.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Sorry for the delay on this. I agree with the proposed fix; not sure why
it wasn't that way before, except maybe to avoid multiple running copies
of the app. Better to have multiple copies than be unable to play sounds
at all, eh? I'll change this today (Monday) and it should propagate
tomorrow.
-Todd
On Wed, 24 Nov 1999, Robert A Basch wrote:
> System name: aupair.mit.edu
> Type and version: IP32 8.3.23 (with mkserv)
> Display type: CRM
>
> Shell: /bin/athena/tcsh
> Window manager: 4Dwm
>
> What were you trying to do?
> Play an MPEG II audio file in Netscape on IRIX, by clicking
> on a link to a URL with a .mp2 suffix.
>
> What's wrong:
> After the file is apparently downloaded successfully, the IRIX
> soundplayer program is run and pops up an error message:
>
> "Cannot open selected file."
>
> What should have happened:
> It should have played the audio file.
>
> Please describe any relevant documentation references:
> Examining the helper applications, under Edit Preferences, I
> see that the entry for "audio/*" runs "/usr/sbin/soundplayer %s".
> By default, soundplayer forks, and the parent exits, causing
> Netscape to delete the downloaded file before the soundplayer
> child can read it.
>
> According to the soundplayer(1) man page, Netscape should
> invoke soundplayer with the "-nofork" and "-nounique" options;
> that will prevent it from forking and exiting, and allows more
> than one instance to run. This should probably be set in our
> Netscape mailcap file.
>
> Note that this solution is sub-optimal, in that Netscape will
> start a new instance of soundplayer for each sound file that
> is loaded.
>
